Toronto’s Make Your Exit make a stirring brand of piano tinged rock, reminiscent of Drink Up Buttercup or Cold War Kids.  It’s rough around the edges; it’s frayed at the seams.  It’s stories retold until they’re familiar, comfortable.

This song in particular, entitled “Leave This Town,” runs the well-worn path of the need to get the hell out of wherever, and then, after lead singer Jeff Buckley (!) makes his impassioned plea, the band devolves into a meandering jam, as if to soundtrack the sight of the familiar skyline disappearing through the rear window of a car.

Make Your Exit’s most recent EP – entitled Remind Me the Reason I Came – has been out for about a year now, but it’s just recently made its way to me.  Beyond this track, the entire 7-song affair is excellent.  I hear The Walkmen in the way their songs sound, and a confident undercurrent connecting everything together.  And for real: can we start talking about the great bands coming out of Toronto of late?

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Make Your Exit – Leave This Town (mp3) from Remind Me the Reason I Came EP

Maybe it’s just me, but this past weekend went way too quickly.  It was here and gone in what seemed like an instant, and now we’re back to the weekly grind.  Such is live, I suppose.

Anyway, if you don’t know what this project is about, go here to check out my complete list, and get the brief rules.  And once you’re finished, read on:

117. Jason Mraz – No Doubling Back (mp3) (3:33) [Time Remaining: 466:36]

I suppose that Jason Mraz has always been the goofy troubadour that he currently is, but when I first found out about him about 8/9 years ago, it was far more endearing than it has since become.  And, the guy can sing.  The earlier recordings I have of him, in a coffeeshop in San Diego, imperfections and all, got played for a year straight at least.

“No Doubling Back” is a break-up song – but it’s light and breezy while being forthcoming about the end of a relationship that’s no longer working.  The end is painfully obvious to the narrator, but neither party has said anything about it.  And I’ve never been quite able to get over just how much I enjoy it.  (As an aside, the song is 4:39, but I’m not counting the banter for the first minute:06 toward this project.  If anyone cries foul, I’ll change it, but I don’t think anyone cares.)

118. Jeff Buckley – Lover, You Should’ve Come Over (mp3) from Grace (6:44) [Time Remaining: 459:52]

Even if this were not one of the greatest songs of all time (which it is), it would be included for the line: “she’s a tear that hangs inside my soul forever” – which is the most beautifully depressing thought I can imagine.  The song is rife with references like that, but that one catches me every single time.

Submitting to my irrational dislike for odd numbers, I’m only going to post one song for this week’s chapter of my 1000 Minutes Project.  Rest assured, however, I’m kicking myself for not having posted it earlier on – it’s just that good.  I’ll even throw in an alternate version of it, but that version isn’t part of the project.

30. Jeff Buckley – Last Goodbye (mp3) from Grace (4:35) [Time Remaining: 824:32]

The beginning of the song is fairly innocuous; the guitar starts, then the rest of the band shuffles in one-by-one, until the moment it all comes together after about twenty-four seconds.

The music is more upbeat than the lyrical matter should allow, but it has a boozy feeling about it.  A night of drinking, an ill-advised cab ride to his former significant other’s house, and we pick up the one-sided conversation.

It’s pleading, a little embarrassing to watch, but there’s nothing that we, the listeners, can do to stop it.  It’s the last thing you’ve always wanted to say to a now-ex, that last ditch effort to get yourself back in his/her good graces.  And while the entreaty may have had an affect on the other person, ultimately, it’s fruitless.  The storyteller is left to wander the nameless streets, wallowing in the past.

The song is powerful – one of my favorites of all time.  The subject is instantly relatable, because it’s an experience that most of us have had.  It’s honest about the end of a relationship, about the wrenching feeling that accompanies such a loss.  It doesn’t treat the other person poorly; it doesn’t call names; it’s decidedly adult.  It ends without resolution, without closure, because it’s rare that that is ever achieved in these situations.

It fades out slowly, and ends sparsely.  A couple of final plinking notes on a piano are the unpronounced end to a grand, albeit futile, gesture.

BONUS!: Jeff Buckley – Last Goodbye (Alternate Version) (mp3) from Eternal Life [single]

(This version has a different introduction, and a couple additional lyrics.  The strings from the album version are absent, but the song doesn’t lack for it.  It’s just a different retelling.)

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